Well after nearly 30 years since I last played a set I thought I’d come out of retirement (LOL). Back in those days I started playing reggea and soul parties then progressed to jungle and soulful house. Anyway I had most of my collection transfered from vinyl to digital although a hard drive crash caused a major prblem but enough was saved. So getting bored at weekends I thought about returning back to the decks so began looking at cost of starting back up especially after playing at my friends wedding and everyone boosting my ego.
I began by trawling the web for advise and review and found myself here, great source especially with the youtube videos. I finally opted for the VCI-100 which after many a bidding war on ebay I got a used one for £220, a couple of sounds card which came to a total £70 and Tracktor Pro cost me £100. headphones £25.00. Oh the joys of ebay. So £415 a few years of collecting music got me back on the road. My music of choice is House but it seems after passing the word around that I’m back I’m getting called to play reggea. One night has passed which was a free play to help a friend but form that I now have my first paid booking.
My budget is small but I have to update my collection of house beats bit by bit so in the mean time I’ll take any booking going. A couple of friends have talked about promotion night so I’ll keep you updated on my trials and tribulations, and on my successes.
By the way if anyone in the Yorkshire or the Midlands wants a opening DJ let me know
Blogs are your friend when updating your music collection. You can also look into some DJ pools that charge 20-40 bucks per month and spend an entire month downloading past releases then cancel your membership. You can catch up some tracks this way too without having to spend too much cash
The only pools I’ve been a member of are for hip-hop, top 40, dance remixes, etc. Not any house or EDM.
mymp3pool.com is a fairly decent one for Top 40 culb dance music and it’s only 20 bucks a month. If you are looking to expand your music library for 20 bucks you can get a shitload of music.
For updates on EDM I just browse thru some blogs, some have downloads that probably aren’t legit. Other times I just check the top downloads at beatport to see whats hot, but that place gets expensive.
Having had my hand in the music blogging world in the past couple of years, I can say that there’s a very small percentage of the thousands of tracks published each day that will provide you with a combination of legitimacy, encoding quality, and musical integrity.
A few of the larger and well-known ones out there are the real thing, letting you know what true bitrate their files are while having the copyright holder’s permission to distribute them. Palms Out Sounds comes to mind immediately, and you can find links to their amazing partners and friends on their site. Your list of daily reads will grow from there if you start exploring.
Then there’s the other, more prevalent side of the music blog universe which more often than not considers these unwritten rules to be extremely loose, non-applicable to them, or completely non-existent. Anyone who trawls the blogs for most of their music has a significant amount of 320k files re-encoded from low-quality source files, stream rips, mistakenly-tagged files, and a host of other things generally considered undesirable if you don’t want your live sets to have the audio fidelity of a Youtube playlist.
I’ve picked up files from blogs claiming to have obtained their content directly from the artist or label only to find the mp3 is riddled with Beatport, Juno, and Turntable Lab tags. The real giveaway is when the same file was published by another blog which is well-known for having a direct partnership with the artist or label upon the official teaser period or release date. While I’d admit it’s kind of awesome to get your good stuff for free, there is no way that can be considered a good look for any DJ not living in a university dorm room or parents’ house.
I’m really trying not to lecture anyone here, but in case you skipped those above paragraphs, use the blogs as a source for your working tracks very sparingly for your own sake.
The pools are great, but I haven’t found one that isn’t too expensive for a hobbyist or a DJ not playing out multiple times per week (like me, hah). Turntable Lab is a great starting source, and still my biggest informer on the new good stuff. I’m a once-a-week customer of theirs.
I live in a dorm, guess I don’t need to read the rest
Most of the stuff I have now, came from zippyshare, and it just feels wrong… I’ve always told myself that if I ever made it I would buy every song I have downloaded illegally, but the best thing would be to just get them legally now
I guess from now on I should buy the stuff I’m actually planning on playing at serious gigs, and just steal the stuff I play at not so serious gigs, would be a good start…
Since Im quoting you to make my reply seem longer I would say to reconnect to what in going on in the clubs. What has become the House you liked so much back in the day to what are kids listening right now. Beatport.com is a great way to check.
Then after hearing what artist you liked go to last FM or Pandora and put that artist as a play-list ans see who the service can come up with that you may like. Such discovering mechanism is the culprit of half my DJ catalog currently. Remember to pay them a few bucks for the material. They deserve it. Hardware wise you are golden. A tweaked laptop and traktor along a VCI100 and Ean Golden videos on how to get the most out of your equipment will give you a lot of stuff to chew on.
Mastering the basics is way better than grasping the advanced. Doing the most with the minimum is the way to go and getting your investment back. ;D
The best bit is that you can buy just one song rather than a whole 12" or album worth, and $0.79 is not as big a commitment as a $15 import 12".
As an aside, it’s good to see passionate argument for properly bought music. I think people are starting to “get it” now, that if you don’t pay the artist, the music will eventually stop coming.
In my view the record companies were actually the reason for much illegal downloading as people resented their control (and their asses still need a bit more kicking, it’s only my view though!).
But new distribution channels and egalitarian ways-to-market are taking hold. The balance between ethics and availability, artists and consumers is returning.
Well time moves on but my budget is still a budget. I had a friend with a system we used when we shared gigs but his commitments meant booking were in his time zone not mine. So, I decided as I had the kiind of venue in mind where I wanted to start out it was time to get my bidding head head on on read reviews galore to weigh money against sound. I saw a few systems on ebay ans set about adding them to my watch list. I missed out on beauty by a few £s and had arranged a party for the following week so was short on time. I kept going back to a used sytem that would me atleast a £100 on the new price so emailed the seller to find ouit what price he waas looking for. Strangely he want less than the starting bid so I said I would keep an eye on it and if no made a bid I would contact him again. No one did bid so I got it for £25 less than the asking price and £200 less than brand new. 2 x 300watt subs 2x 250watt mids and tops and 1000watt amp. This lady of the house isn’t happy to have it sat in the living room but hey it’s a small sacrifice. To got with I also got a mixer/sampler, upgraded my vci 100 to 1.4hd and rocked the house once again. I got the vibe going on but with alot of help from the DJTECH TOOLS TEAM…A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL…
VCI-100 = £220
1000watt 4 speaker system = £250
Mixer = £41
Music collectrion = priceless (30yrs)
Well disaster strikes. I’d played a party and was showing off the ins and outs of my vci 100. All were impressed. Anyway, an old friend asked about my set up so I explained the pro and cons of digital DJaying and he says “I hope you have your hard drive backed up.” “It’s some thing I need to do” I say A week later I’m the venue I’m booked to play at is double booked with a Art gallery so I use the time to visit some friends who are also DJ’s to discuss Xmas plans. My friend had some mixes I was interested so I said I’d take some once I got my new drive. On arriving home the next day I sit down with my lap top plug my drive in and …Please Format Your Drive. OMG the drive is dead.
What a sleepless night I had. The next day I trawl the web look for data recovery services the cheapest being £250 for my 320Gb not cheap but worth it if I can get the music back. One problem the hard drive wouldn’t be ready before my next gig. Back to the net I go looking for software to help recover my drive. For anyone who befalls my fate try EASEUS Data recovery. This thing found thing I deleted from my drive ages ago. It took 2 days to completely recover my drive and I now have two 1Tb drives; one for daily use and one to back up everything.
So my No1 tip to one and all, Always back up data
try soundcloud.com of your fav artists/djs they might have free 320, also you often find lesser known artists/remixers that hand out all their tracks free.
gottadancedirty.com is quite nice, dishes out ‘‘samplers’’ of edm, but there might be 192s in there, too.
for top40ish stuff i like thissongissick.com as it offers top40 remixes and sometimes decent edm. (not sure if this1 is entirely legal tho, as they sometimes have to remove tracks :l )
